LETTER: Parking no walk in the park
To the editor:
If you are a student at USU, you know that trying to find a parking spot on campus is just about as hard as trying to fly a kite without a string. There are simply not enough parking spaces. When the curbs are bumper-to-bumper with cars for three blocks around campus, there is clearly a problem.
Parking is particularly insufficient for those who live on campus. Having lived on campus last year, I am well-acquainted with the problem of trying to find a place to park. There were not enough parking spots for everyone in my building, let alone the three other buildings that shared the lot. The four buildings combined housed 408 students. The parking lot for Merrill has 150 parking spaces, leaving 258 people without a place to park. The solution: a lottery for parking in front of our building. The remaining residents were scattered across campus in various parking lots.
When I first found out that I was going to have to park near the Towers (which is across campus, near the engineering building), I was extremely surprised. My surprise soon turned into frustration. Not only did I have to walk across campus in the winter, I had to walk across campus after working late in the dark, alone. Although instances of rape or crime are rare, this could be dangerous, especially for girls. According to SAAVY, “Rape is the most common violent crime on American college campuses today.”
Also, finding a place for visitors to park is impossible without them getting fined or having to walk a mile. To fix this problem, visitors are allowed to park on campus on weekends. Does this solve the problem? No. All this does is make parking even more difficult for residents because visitors take their spots.
Perhaps the space where the old library stood would be a good location. It’s currently empty, and it is the nearest place to the on-campus housing. I do give the school credit for adding a new parking garage near Old Main, but that doesn’t solve the problem for students living on campus. Adding additional parking for on-campus residents would be money well spent.
Deborah Schippers